


In Mercy's Shadow

by EllieMurasaki



Category: Mother of the Crows - Seanan McGuire (Song)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-26 04:26:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/961544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/EllieMurasaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erin works hard for her daughter Autumn's future. Maybe it's Autumn's present she should be worrying about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Mercy's Shadow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apatternedfever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apatternedfever/gifts).



Last night's windstorm took down a lot of leaves, Erin thought, looking out at her front yard's patchwork quilt of red and gold over green. Time to get out the rake—and tell Autumn to put on her jacket and come play outside. Erin enjoyed jumping in a good pile of leaves as much as her daughter did; raking twice wasn't a hardship.

Only Autumn, Erin discovered, wasn't in the living room. Or the library/craft room. Or her bedroom, though she'd been into the candles without permission again; fortunately for Autumn, she'd put them all out before leaving the room. Nor was she already piling up and jumping in leaves in either the front or back yard. Erin checked every room in the house twice. Even Erin's office, which (aside from being empty of all but Erin all day) was strictly off-limits unless somebody was bleeding or unconscious. She checked the yards three times. Autumn should have told her if she was going to go play elsewhere...Autumn always told her when she was going to go play elsewhere...

Erin heard Bridget's car pull into the driveway and rushed around the house. "You didn't see Autumn on the way in, did you?" she asked Bridget.

"No, but I also wasn't looking," Bridget answered, pulling their bags of groceries out of the car. "Where is she?"

"I don't know," Erin said, hearing the drumbeat start up: awful mother, awful mother. "She left without telling me and I didn't notice till just now."

"What was she doing before?" Bridget asked, their tone saying clear as words calm down.

"Something with candles in her room." Erin blinked. "Something with candles in her room in her altar corner."

Bridget closed the car door and locked it. "So magic, or a ritual. Who did she call?" They flicked their fingers at Erin, who ran to hold the front door open for her groceries-laden partner.

Erin hurried back upstairs to Autumn's room, joined a few moments later by Bridget once the cold groceries were in the fridge and freezer. "Black and red candles," Erin said when Bridget walked in. "Getting into the Samhain spirit a few days early, I see."

"And a feather," said Bridget. Probably off a crow, Erin thought, from its size and color. "Wonder where she found it."

The doorbell rang, and rang again, and again before Erin got downstairs to open the door for, it turned out, Kim. "You're just in time to join the search party," said Erin. "Autumn did something with magic and then walked out."

"She's at the orchard," said Kim. "We have to hurry."

Erin blinked.

"I was having a very pleasant nap until I started oneiromancing," Kim said irritably. "We have to _go_." She hollered, " _Bridget_!"

In Kim's little Toyota on the way to the orchard, Kim explained, "She called on the Mother of the Crows."

"Oh," said Erin, a tight little knot in her stomach. The Mother wouldn't hurt a child. Not even the third face of the Mother, the frightening face, would hurt a child.

Would she?

"What did Autumn think she was doing?" wondered Bridget, fingers tight around the jacket of Autumn's they'd grabbed on the way out.

"I don't know," said Kim. "No audio. But she had the window open, and crows flew in, weren't even bothered by the screen—" She took a hand off the steering wheel to flap it like a bird's wing, then snapped her fingers. "Gone. And then in the middle of a corn maze. Around here there's only the one by the orchard."

Autumn might have screamed. Probably had. Erin hadn't heard. She wouldn't have heard, because she had headphones in while she worked. Awful mother. Awful mother.

The rest of the ride was silent.

At the orchard, the corn maze was crowded even for the Saturday before Halloween. "That doesn't make sense," said Kim quietly, finding a place to park. "The maze was empty."

"Maybe it's the wrong maze," said Bridget, shivering.

"Let's try this one first," Erin said. "We're here, after all. And it might just be that no one was in the part you saw."

Kim twisted around in her seat and held out a hand, the green energy of water flowing around her gold fingers. Bridget summoned a tiny blue whirlwind to their pink palm, and Erin a little red fireball to her brown hand. One hand piled on another stacked on the third.

"Left or right?" asked Bridget when they were all out of the car.

"It's the Mother of the Crows," said Erin. "Right."

The three joined the line waiting to file into the maze, chatter and cold breeze surrounding them. Almost as soon as they were inside with Erin's right hand raised to the wall of cornstalks, mist rose and the noise faded away.

"That's ominous," said Bridget.

Kim started chanting the most popular prayer to the Mother of the Crows: _Walk me down the scarecrow trail, black-winged Mother of the Crows_. Bridget looked around one more time and joined in. Erin, silent, took the lead.

(Awful mother. Awful mother.)

Turn to the left. Turn to the right. Turn to the right. Turn to the left. Erin lost track of the turns, but turning around and keeping her left hand to the wall would get her back to the exit.

At the center of the maze stood a tall white woman with hair as dark as her feathered cloak. Behind her, shivering without her jacket, sat Autumn. "Mommy!" Autumn shrieked as soon as the adults came into view.

"Autumn!" Bridget rushed forward, jacket in hand, and slammed into an invisible barrier. Erin stopped short and Kim ran into her.

"I have struck a bargain with this child," said the woman. "Her end will be upheld, so I must carry out my part."

"She's eight years old!" said Kim. "Whatever deal she made can't hold!"

The woman, the Mother, watched the three and did not reply.

"She's my daughter," said Erin. "We just want her home safe."

"Are you the awful mother, or am I?" asked the Mother. "Perhaps it is best for her if she stays with me, to learn things man was not meant to know. What, after all, is a woman for?"

Autumn looked up.

"Give her back, you—" Bridget shut up, apparently realizing that swearing at a goddess was a bad idea.

"Strike a new bargain," said Erin, stepping forward. "Whatever you want from my daughter, take from me, and give her back to us." If this went horribly wrong, Bridget and Kim would take care of Autumn—

"If you can find her, you may keep her," said the Mother, and dissolved into a thousand crows. For a long moment there was nothing to see or hear but the flapping of black wings.

Then there were a thousand crows spread across a field; the maze evaporated, and Autumn with it.

"'If you can find her, you may keep her'?" Kim repeated. "What the hell does that mean?"

Bridget paled. "She's...one of the crows."

Erin grabbed for the nearest one, fully expecting to be scratched as it flew off, but the crow stayed calm and still, and there was a distinct aroma of jasmine.

"I smell candy corn," said Kim, confused and holding another crow.

Bridget knelt to sniff another crow. "The ocean," they said. "What..."

"That's how we find her," said Erin, realizing. "Which crow smells like Autumn?"

"What does Autumn smell like?" Kim asked. "Irish Spring?"

"We use Dove," said Bridget. "I don't think it's that simple."

Erin sniffed another crow. Licorice. Like the one black candle they'd smelled at Yankee Candle, she and Autumn, exploring the Halloween selection—

The candles Autumn had burned this afternoon. Black and red candles. They hadn't bought any of the licorice, Erin's black candles were patchouli-scented instead, but what had Autumn insisted on getting? Erin couldn't remember—awful mother, awful—argh!

("Mommy, when are we going to the orchard?" Autumn had asked. "I want—")

That was it!

Erin dove into the mass of crows.

Ozone. Coffee and clover. Eucalyptus and salt water. Black amber and apples. Roses and snow. Hibiscus and water lilies. Burnt sugar and ash. Peat and roses. Cinnamon and myrrh. Daffodils and dogwood. Copper and cut grass.

_Patchouli and apple cider!_

Erin snatched up that crow and held it close. Her close. "Bird-wise Mother of the Crows!" she shouted. " _Give me back my daughter!_ "

Brisk wind whipped the thousand crows away, leaving only the Mother standing before her in the center of the maze—the facial features were different, the skin brown instead of pale, but the feathered cloak was the same—and Autumn, human again, shivering in Erin's arms.

"Her bargain with me is that she refrain from sweets until Yuletide and in exchange I make you aware of a difficulty she has been having," said the Mother, tone gentle where before it had been harsh. "It is a good bargain. She will hold to it."

"What difficulty?" said Bridget, raggedly.

"Erin, you are always busy with work, even when you are not supposed to be working," said the Mother, and something in Erin crumpled up and fell to the ground.

She would do better.

"Bridget," the Mother continued, "you are either not there or too tired to play with her."

"And when I'm there," said Kim, "I'm focusing on Bridget and Erin. Not Autumn."

"Yes," said the Mother.

"We'll talk about this," Erin told Autumn. "The four of us. Family meeting, as soon as we get home and you get warmed up." Maybe Kim could move in? They'd have to get a bigger house so Kim could have the private space she needed, but one larger mortgage payment would be no greater than the current mortgage payment plus Kim's rent, surely? Then Kim would be there for Autumn more often, and if the larger mortgage payment were _smaller_ than the current payments, Erin and Bridget wouldn't need to work as much and could also have more time for Autumn. But that was a thing to discuss later.

"We're already at the orchard," Autumn said. "Can we get apple cider?"

Erin smiled. "We can make mulled cider, too."

Autumn grinned. "Love you, Mommy."

Erin looked up at the Mother and nodded. "I know."


End file.
